Germany

So, there appears to be a possibility we will be moving to Germany for the next 2-4 years.
M's company has a position there (dependent on a contract that has yet to be signed, so this is no definite thing) and he came home joking one day that we might take it rather than hiring a new person to go. We laughed, and brushed it off. About a week later, we both came back to it. Y'know, maybe it's not such a crazy idea. We aren't likely to ever be less tied down than we are now. When I count the tangible 'big' things we've acquired, which are actually *ours* it's two cars, a couch, some computer equipment, a washer-dryer set. Not much. Not to much to move or leave as things require.
The company would pay for the move. They would hire me on additionally. They would pay for housing. There is apparently no income tax? While the cost of living in Europe is higher, they would essentially double our salary (still in dollars) and that's on top of the free housing and tax free status. This would put us in a much more favorable position to buy a house when we got back, as opposed to just scraping by as we were looking to do this summer. It seems like one of those absolutely perfect opportunities, and everything that is scary about it are things that I would be a better person for having faced.
That said, what's scary about it:

• Being in another country. I make friends slowly. I lean on my family a lot. I was one of those kids who came home from college on weekends for things other than laundry. The social ramifications of this are staggering to me.
• The language. I am not one of those good with languages people. Apparently, English is very accepted in that area, but that's a cop-out. I'd feel like an ugly american living somewhere and not knowing the language.
• I would be working with M. While not as horrific of a failure as explaining math problems to M, coding with M has been, a bit dicey. Additionally, I would be working in an area that I'm not 100% comfortable/qualified. (despite the opinions of his boss, who has been making noises about hiring me since M mentioned my gpa) When I'm uncomfortable, and M is available for the purpose, I tend to lean on him. I'm not sure if this would be good in a long-term working environment. Add to that the previous issue of him being the only person I will know there, and I'm seeing a lot of him. It is definitely possible for me to o.d. on M.
• Plus: we would be essentially the most technical (at least computers/code-wise) people there. Minimal oversight. We can phone back to the office he's at now for support, and there's a non-technical manager/overseer type on base, but largely we are on our own. I worry that this may result in us being lazy and not learning/producing much in that time. Of course, this last one could really swing the other direction too.

But there it is. If this does go through, I will probably start a separate blog about it to avoid cluttering this up, but as it isn't even a definite yet, it's here for now.

In knitting, I'm almost done with the first sleeve of the handpainted yarn ribbed jacket. I got pooling despite the alternating yarn, but it's not too bad, so I'm ok with it.